"Only friends," he echoes, "when I have loved you since the first hour I saw you. Oh, Lady Vera, do not grow so pale! Is it strange that I should love you? Others have been as wild and presumptuous as I have. Others have come down before the fire of those dark eyes, slain by their beauty. I know you have been cold, indifferent to all, even to me at first. But when you thawed to me at last, when you were kindly and friendly——"
"Yes, that was all," she interrupts him, in a kind of frantic haste. "I was kind and friendly, that was all. I meant no more, believe me."
The soldier's blue eyes look at her with a keen reproach before which her own glance wavers and falls.
"Lady Vera, you are no coquette," he exclaims, "and yet I could swear that you have given me encouragement to hope that you would love me. Do you remember the beautiful poems of love I have read to you, with my very heart on my lips? Do you remember the songs I have sung to you, and the dreamy twilights when we sat and talked together? Do you remember how you have worn the flowers I brought you? You have blushed and smiled for me as you did for no other, and you are no coquette. Oh, my darling, surely you will love me?"
As he talks to her, the color goes from white to red, and red to white in her beautiful face. Her lips quiver, the tears spring into her eyes.
"You are blaming me," she says, incoherently, "but you have no right. I know nothing of love. I thought we were only friends. I am so sorry."
"Do you mean to say you do not love me, that you did not know I loved you, and was seeking you for my wife, Lady Vera?" he asks, with forced calmness.
"Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt.
He is puzzled for a moment.